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Alexa is undoubtedly one of the most important Web-based ranking tools for small-business owners, advertisers and bloggers all over the world. It is therefore not surprising that a lot of importance is placed on Alexa elements such as the Alexa Toolbar, Webmasters Forum and Alexa search results in general. The Alexa toolbar collects information about user-browsing behaviour which is then stored and analysed for Alexa’s regular Web traffic reports. Although the accuracy of Alexa ranking is sometimes contentious and controversial, this article will only focus on the area of reporting.
Usually, when a person searches for the Alexa traffic rank of a Website, the site’s description is displayed just above tables that show a host of data which are often difficult to interpret by people who are not familiar with SEO-data analysis. However, during a recent visit to the Alexa Website, I noticed an interesting feature, that is currently being tested by Alexa (See image below), which showed a simple summary of traffic data in 3-4 short sentences just below my Website’s description. This led me to contact Alexa through their Webmaster forum so as to find out what this new feature was all about and their response was:
We’re rolling out a new feature that gives a “plain English” description of what we know about a site. We’re still working on it, and just trying it out. Thank you for your kind words on it; we really appreciate the feedback.
CLICK HERE to view Alexa's New Summary Display
In summary, the new feature will summarise the following information in simple and easy-to-understand detail.
- World Ranking
- Percentage and Description of Page Views
- Website’s Bounce Rate
- Average Duration of Visitors
- Average Unique Page Views/day
- Percentage of Search Engine Traffic
Once fully implemented, non-tech savvy Web users and Website owners can be a little bit more relaxed the next time they view their Alexa ranking. No matter what anyone says about Alexa, its popularity is growing steadily and the sooner you start taking your Website’s Alexa ranking more seriously, the better.
Talking Point
Which online services do you use to rank your Website? How useful do you think this new feature will be to Alexa users?
12 Comments
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Kaushik
July 21, 2010 at 11:34 am
No matter what they do, Alexa, or for that matter any web analytics company (Quancast, Compete etc) can never give accurate stats about a site. And Alexa is the worst among them.
Sheila Walker
July 21, 2010 at 3:07 pm
That is a neat feature that they’ve added to their site. Like Maushik stated, the stats are meh, but that’s what google analytics is for anyways.
Robert Vessels
July 22, 2010 at 12:46 am
Eh it’s a cute amount of fluff, but outside of that can’t see it making a huge difference.
VPS Hosting
July 22, 2010 at 6:44 am
Whatever changes Alexa has to do, I aims for a better and accurate results. We have to give them credit about it.
Payday Loans
July 22, 2010 at 9:07 am
I guess nothing is perfect in terms of giving exact analysis of a certain website..and Alexa did help many web entrepreneur…anyway good post..it really gives me an insight about Alexia…good day…
Domain name registration
July 22, 2010 at 9:22 pm
I dont real like Alexas ranking, but am going to check how my site is going to look like on it with all the new features.
Jabber Server
July 27, 2010 at 12:58 pm
Alexa is a very powerful tool, used to rank website traffic. The relationship between how Alexa rates your website and how popular your website is, however, isn’t as obvious as it might seem.After comparing your site to the other ones it ranks, Alexa will assign your site a ranking number…and its new feature is really interesting..
Computer Help
July 28, 2010 at 7:18 pm
Well, they do give incorrect information. Users who get only 5-6k uniques are ranked around 60-70k as they write about webmasters topics. But if you are a tech writer and even 50k uniques can land you in the range of 100k alexa
Tropical Home Decor
August 1, 2010 at 4:17 pm
I have SEO Quake installed on my computer, and I sometimes get confused about the rankings: In my opinion the Alexa traffic rank should somewhat correspond with the SEMRush SE Traffic Rank on my SEO Quake toolbar. So, if the Alexa traffic rank “number” is getting smaller, meaning the traffic and popularity of a site are picking up, the SEMRush SE Traffic Rank Price should go up. I have noticed that that’s not really the case, and I am a little confused about it. So I am really not sure how serious to take the Alexa rankings….
Admin
August 5, 2010 at 2:08 pm
Sometimes, you just have to wonder why then is Alexa so popular if it conflicts with some of these other tools? However, a lot of people have this problem and the only sure thing is the fact that none of these Web ranking/statistical tools are actually 100% accurate. I usually just focus on using one or two (with the most similar results) for estimation purposes.
Jim Olenbush
August 10, 2011 at 9:14 am
Any business owner who is truly concerned with an e-commerce operation and web presence needs to be aware of Alexa. Obviously, Alexa and its services are an important consideration for the website owner who wishes to determine page rank and market reach based on the company’s unique toolbar data. While submission to the site and its reports are free, there are also paid advertising opportunities for businesses, although this does not influence ranking.